1. Field of the Invention
The disclosures herein generally relate to a printer driver for a computer to execute for controlling a printer, and a print control method, a recording medium, and a print control apparatus for controlling a printer.
2. Description of the Related Art
In production printing whose targets are an in-house printing department of a company, a print shop or the like, a print output itself is a product in many cases. Because of this, it is desired for a printer for the production printing that it outputs not an easy print job such as a conventional office print job but a high value-added print job in which a different print media type and a different print setting are provided for each page. As a technology for realizing this kind of print setting for each page, there is a function called a “special page”. As a “special page”, there is an “insert page”, an “exception page” or the like. The “insert page” is a function for newly inserting into a specified location of a set of jobs a page different from the jobs. In addition, the “exception page” is a function for applying a print setting different from a set of jobs to a specified page range. In the “exception page”, print settings for a print sheet, post-processing, colors, and the like can be set differently from the jobs.
In the conventional printer driver, an “exception page” is utilized in the following procedure. FIG. 30 illustrates a list display screen 910 of registered “special pages” in the conventional printer driver, and FIG. 31 illustrates an exception page setting edit screen 920 in the conventional printer driver. In the list display screen 910 shown in FIG. 30, a list of “special pages” registered by a user is shown in a list 911. In this example, in the list 911, two “special pages” are listed using one line per page. From this state shown in FIG. 30, in order to edit one of the “special pages”, a line 912 for the edit target “special page” is selected from the list 911.
Then, when an [edit . . . ] button 913 is pressed, the exception page setting edit screen 920 shown in FIG. 31 is displayed. The user sets each of setting items of the “exception page” selected in the exception page setting edit screen 920. In the exception page setting edit screen 920, only one “exception page” selected as the line 912 of the list 911 shown in FIG. 30 can be edited, and it is impossible to edit a plurality of the “exception pages” together in one edit screen.
Editing of an “insert page” can also be performed according to a similar procedure. FIG. 32 illustrates an insert page setting edit screen 930 in the conventional printer driver. This insert page setting edit screen 930 has a similar configuration as the exception page setting edit screen 920 and it is impossible to edit a plurality of “insert pages” together.
In Patent Document 1, a printer driver is described in which exception settings (“special page”) can be specified in detail for each page, and a page range to which the exception settings are to be applied can be specified easily. This printer driver includes a means for specifying print conditions, a means for saving as standard patterns combinations of standard print conditions and standard drawing data representing drawing content of document data, a means for inserting a separation sheet, replacing a particular sheet with another sheet that has already been printed, and storing combinations of standard print conditions and standard drawing data as print application patterns, a means for spooling for each page, document print conditions and document drawing data included in the document data, a means for detecting a standard pattern which is closest to each specific page range, a means for referring to the print application pattern corresponding to the detected standard pattern and generating print conditions for each page for the specific page range, and a means for generating print data from the document drawing data or the standard drawing data.
However, in the conventional printer driver, in the case where it is desired to edit a plurality of the “special pages” together, the exception page setting edit screen 920 shown in FIG. 31 is required to be invoked as many times as needed. Therefore, the number of times the exception page setting edit screen 920 is opened increases as the number of “special pages” to be edited increases, thereby increasing the user burden.
In other words, in the conventional printer driver, it works on the premise that the user should register and edit each of the “special pages” one by one. Because of this, it works on the premise that the operation should be performed using two types of screens including a screen A: a screen for displaying a list of registered “special pages” (the list display screen 910 in FIG. 30) and a screen B: a screen for editing settings of individual “special pages” (the exception page setting edit screen 920 in FIG. 31 and the insert page setting edit screen 930 in FIG. 32). In order to edit the “special page”, it is required for a user to select one of the “special pages” in the screen A, invoke the screen B and edit the settings in the screen B.
Because of this, in the case of editing a plurality of the “special pages”, it is required to open the screen B many times, which is a big burden for a user. The printer driver described in Patent Document 1 also has a similar problem as far as editing “special pages” is concerned.
[Patent Document 1] Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2013-12033